The Circle (13 page)

There seemed to be a hundred parents’ groups—first-time parents, divorced parents,
parents of autistic children, parents of Guatemalan adoptees, Ethiopian adoptees,
Russian adoptees. There were seven improv comedy groups, nine swim teams—there had
been an inter-staff meet last Wednesday, hundreds of swimmers participating, and a
hundred messages were about the contest, who won, some glitch with the results, and
how a mediator would be on campus to settle any lingering questions or grievances.
There were visits, ten a day at least, from companies presenting innovative new products
to the Circle. New fuel-efficient cars. New fair-trade sneakers. New locally sourced
tennis rackets. There were meetings of every conceivable department—R&D, search, social,
outreach, professional networking, philanthropic, ad sales, and with a plummeting
of her
stomach, Mae saw that she’d missed a meeting, deemed “pretty much mandatory” for all
newbies. That had been last Thursday. Why hadn’t anyone told her?
Well, stupid
, she answered herself.
They did tell you. Right here
.

“Shit,” she said.

By ten p.m., she’d made her way through all the intra-company messages and alerts,
and now turned to her own OuterCircle account. She hadn’t visited in six days, and
found 118 new notices from that day alone. She decided to plow through, newest to
oldest. Most recently, one of her friends from college had posted a message about
having the stomach flu, and a long thread followed, with friends making suggestions
about remedies, some offering sympathy, some posting photos meant to cheer her up.
Mae liked two of the photos, liked three of the comments, posted her own well wishes,
and sent a link to a song, “Puking Sally,” that she’d found. That prompted a new thread,
54 notices, about the song and the band that wrote it. One of the friends on the thread
said he knew the bassist in the band, and then looped him into the conversation. The
bassist, Damien Ghilotti, was in New Zealand, was a studio engineer now, but was happy
to know that “Puking Sally” was still resonating with the flu-ridden. His post thrilled
all involved, and another 129 notices appeared, everyone thrilled to hear from the
actual bassist from the band, and by the end of the thread, Damien Ghilotti was invited
to play a wedding, if he wanted, or visit Boulder, or Bath, or Gainesville, or St.
Charles, Illinois, any time he happened to be passing through, and he would have a
place to stay and a home-cooked meal. Upon the mention of St. Charles, someone asked
if anyone from there had heard about Tim Jenkins, who was fighting in Afghanistan;
they’d seen some mention
of a kid from Illinois being shot to death by an Afghan insurgent posing as a police
officer. Sixty messages later the respondents had determined that it was a different
Tim Jenkins, this one from Rantoul, Illinois, not St. Charles. There was relief all
around, but soon the thread had been overtaken by a multiparticipant debate about
the efficacy of that war, U.S. foreign policy in general, whether or not we won in
Vietnam or Grenada or even WWI, and the ability of the Afghans to self-govern, and
the opium trade financing the insurgents, and the possibility of legalization of any
and all illicit drugs in America and Europe. Someone mentioned the usefulness of marijuana
in alleviating glaucoma, and someone else mentioned it was helpful for those with
MS, too, and then there was a frenetic exchange between three family members of MS
patients, and Mae, feeling some darkness opening its wings within her, signed off.

Mae could no longer keep her eyes open. Though she’d only made it through three days
of her social backlog, she shut down and made for the parking lot.

Tuesday morning’s chute was lighter than Monday’s, but the activity on her third screen
kept her in her chair for the day’s first three hours. Before the third screen, there
had always been a lull, maybe ten or twelve seconds, between when she’d answered a
query and when she knew whether or not the answer had been satisfying; she’d used
the time to memorize the boilerplates and do a few follow-ups, every so often to check
her phone. But now that became more challenging. The third-screen feed dropped forty
new InnerCircle messages every few minutes, fifteen or so OuterCircle posts and zings,
and Mae used
every available moment of downtime to quickly scroll through, make sure there was
nothing that demanded her immediate attention, and then come back to her main screen.

By the end of the morning, the flow was manageable, even exhilarating. The company
had so much going on, so much humanity and good feeling, and was pioneering on all
fronts, that she knew she was being improved just by being in the Circlers’ proximity.
It was like a well-curated organic grocery store: you knew, by shopping there, that
you were healthier; you couldn’t make a bad choice, because everything had been vetted
already. Likewise, everyone at the Circle there had been chosen, and thus the gene
pool was extraordinary, the brainpower phenomenal. It was a place where everyone endeavored,
constantly and passionately, to improve themselves, each other, share their knowledge,
disseminate it to the world.

By lunchtime, though, she was wiped out, and very much looking forward to sitting,
with her cerebral cortex removed, for an hour, on the lawn, with Annie, who had insisted
on it.

At 11:50, though, a second-screen message from Dan appeared:
You got a few mins?

She told Annie she might be late, and when she arrived to Dan’s office, he was leaning
against the doorjamb. He smiled sympathetically at Mae, but with a raised eyebrow,
as if there was something about Mae that was perplexing him, something he couldn’t
put his finger on. He extended his arm into the office, and she slipped past him.
He closed the door.

“Sit down, Mae. You know Alistair, I assume?”

She hadn’t seen the man sitting in the corner, but now that she saw him, she knew
she didn’t know him. He was tall, in his late
twenties, with a careful swirl of sandy brown hair. He was positioned diagonally against
a rounded chair, his thin frame resting stiffly, like a two-by-four. He didn’t stand
to meet her, so Mae extended her hand to him.

“Nice to meet you,” she said.

Alistair sighed with great resignation and extended his hand as if he were about to
touch something washed ashore and rotting.

Mae’s mouth went dry. There was something very wrong.

Dan sat down. “Now, I hope we can make this right as soon as possible,” he said. “Would
you like to start, Mae?”

The two men looked at her. Dan’s eyes were steady, while Alistair’s look was hurt
but expectant. Mae had no idea what to say, no idea what was happening. As the silence
festered and grew, Alistair blinked furiously, holding back tears.

“I can’t believe this,” he managed to say.

Dan turned to him. “Alistair, c’mon. We know you’re hurting, but let’s keep it in
perspective.” Dan turned to Mae. “I’ll point out the obvious. Mae, we’re talking about
Alistair’s Portugal brunch.”

Dan let the words linger, expecting Mae to jump in, but Mae had no idea what those
words meant:
Alistair’s Portugal brunch
? Could she say she had no idea what that meant? She knew she couldn’t. She’d been
late to the feed. This must have something to do with that.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She knew she would have to tread water until she could figure
out what all this was about.

“That’s a good start,” Dan said. “Right, Alistair?”

Alistair shrugged.

Mae continued fumbling. What did she know? There had been a brunch, that much was
certain. And clearly she had not been there.
The brunch was planned by Alistair, and now he was hurt. All this was reasonable to
assume.

“I wish I could have been there,” she ventured, and immediately saw slight signs of
confirmation in their faces. She was onto something. “But I wasn’t sure if …” Now
she took a leap. “I wasn’t sure if I was welcome, being so new here.”

Their faces softened. Mae smiled, knowing she’d hit the right note. Dan shook his
head, happy to have his assumption—that Mae was not an inherently bad person—confirmed.
He got up from his chair, came around his desk and leaned against it.

“Mae, have we not made you feel welcome?” he asked.

“No, you have! You really have. But I’m not a member of Alistair’s team, and I wasn’t
quite sure what the rules were about, you know, members of my team attending the brunches
of more seasoned members of other teams.”

Dan nodded. “See, Alistair? I told you it was easily explained.” Now Alistair was
sitting upright, as if ready to engage again.

“Well of course you’re welcome,” he said, patting her knee playfully. “Even if you’re
a little ob
liv
ious.”

“Now Alistair …”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and took a deep breath. “I’ve got it under control now. I’m
very happy.”

There were a few more statements of apology and laughs about understandings and misunderstandings,
and communications and flow and mistakes and the order of the universe, and finally
it was time to let it go. They stood.

“Let’s hug it out,” Dan said. And they did, forming a tight scrum of newfound communion.

By the time Mae was back at her desk, a message was waiting for her.

Thanks again for coming to meet Alistair and me today. I think that was very productive
and helpful. HR knows about the situation, and to close it out they always like to
get a statement together. So I typed this up. If it sounds good, just sign it on-screen
and send it back
.

There was a line below the statement where Mae was to sign, and she used her fingernail
to sign her name on the screen. She submitted it, and instantly received a thank you
from Dan.

That was great
, he wrote.
Alistair is obviously a little sensitive, but that’s only because he’s such a fiercely
committed Circler. Just like you, right? Thank you for being so cooperative. You were
great. Onward!

Mae was late, and hoped Annie would still be waiting. The day was clear and warm,
and Mae found Annie on the lawn, typing on her tablet with a granola bar dangling
from her mouth. She squinted up at Mae. “Hey. You’re tardy.”

“Sorry.”

“How are you?”

Mae made a face.

“I know, I know. I followed the whole thing,” Annie said, chewing extravagantly.

“Stop eating like that. Close your mouth. You did?”

“I was just listening while I worked. They asked me to. And I’ve heard much worse.
Everyone has a few of those early on. Eat fast, by the way. I want to show you something.”

In quick succession, two waves passed over Mae. First, profound unease that Annie
had been listening without her knowledge, followed by a wave of relief, knowing her
friend had been with her, even if remotely, and could confirm that Mae would survive.

“Did
you
?” she asked.

“Did I what?”

“Ever get called on the carpet like that? I’m still shaking.”

“Of course. Once a month maybe. I still do. Chew fast.”

Mae ate as quickly as she could, watching a game of croquet being played on the lawn.
The players seemed to have made up their own rules. Mae finished her lunch.

“Good, get up,” Annie said, and they made their way toward TomorrowTown. “What? Your
face still has a question protruding from it.”

“Did
you
go to that Portugal brunch?”

Annie scoffed. “Me? No, why? I wasn’t invited.”

“But why was
I
? I didn’t sign up for it. I’m not some Portugal freak.”

“It’s on your profile, isn’t it? Didn’t you go there once?”

“Sure, but I never mentioned it on my profile. I’ve been to Lisbon, but that’s it.
That was five years ago.”

They approached the TomorrowTown building, fronted by a wall of ironwork that looked
vaguely Turkish. Annie waved her pass over a wall-mounted pad and the door opened.

“Did you take pictures?” Annie asked.

“In Lisbon? Sure.”

“And they were on your laptop?”

Mae had to think a second. “I guess so.”

“Then that’s probably it. If they were on your laptop, now they’re in the cloud, and
the cloud gets scanned for information like that. You don’t have to run around signing
up for Portugal interest clubs or anything. When Alistair wanted to do his brunch,
he probably just asked for a search of everyone on campus who had visited the country,
took pictures or mentioned it in an email or whatever. So then he
automatically gets a list, and sends his invitation out. It saves about a hundred
hours of nonsense. Over here.”

They stopped in front of a long hallway. Annie’s eyes were alight with mischief. “Okay.
You want to see something surreal?”

“I’m still weirded out.”